Excellent combination of features and price. Review on Nokia 7710

I had been looking for a PDA-phone for a long time but was always put it on hold due to the price. It was only about 2 months ago that I finally put the funds together and did some market research.

I narrowed down my search to the following phones: (1) HP iPaq 6515 (2) Sony-Ericcsson P800 (I’m not too sure about the model number, but it’s the only PDA-phone sold by them), (3) Nokia 7710 and (4) Nokia Communicator. The Nokia Communicator is a good choice for those looking for a pure ’business’ phone, but lacked in multimedia features. The Sony-Ericcsson had good features, but was pricey and also had a lack of add on software that could be installed. I really like the iPaq, but it was almost Rs. 10,000 more than the Nokia. It is better than the Nokia in almost every aspect, especially in the range of software available. If you have Visual Studio .NET, you can even develop your own applications for the phone. However, I finally decided to purchase the 7710 for the following reasons.

Pros:

(1) The screen. The 7710 has a LARGE display that measures 640 x 200 pixels. This is of excellent quality, and gives clear text and graphics. The large display means that I can use this for browsing web pages without having to scroll left-and-right on each line. Even the iPaq cannot do this.

(2) Touchscreen. The 7710 has a sensitive touch screen, and easily recognizes your handwriting. If your handwriting is poor, you can train it to read your text, or you can use the on-screen keyboard.

(3) Multimedia: The 7710 comes with a good camera, music player and radio functionality. The camera is rated at 1 megapixel, but gives crisp and clear photos in ’Normal’ and ’High’ quality modes. The in-built speaker is of above average quality and so are the standard earphones that come with the phone. The Music Player software can play MP3s at 320kbps (older phones would reduce the quality to 64kbps) and has basic plalist features. I would recommend downloading and installing a different music software as the features on the standard model are quite limited. There are several such freeware software available. The radio is very clear and you can save your favorite channels.

(4) Business Software: While the 7710 cannot compete with Mobile Office present in Windows Mobile 5 devices, it provides basic Word, Excel and Powerpoint creation facilities.

(5) Gaming: The 7710 comes with just one or two games. Disappointed? Don’t be! All you have to do is download and install PicoDrive, another freeware program, and you can run any Sega Genesis game on your 7710. In my opinion, these games are better than most of the ’mobile’ games that websites offer.

Cons:

(1) In the high-quality camera mode, it can take 4-5 seconds for the camera to record the image.

(2) The phone can get quite slow when multiple programs are running. This can be easily remedied by downloading and installing the freeware program TaskSpy which allows you to close unecessary programs.

(3) Lack of software. If you look at Symbian Series 60 (S60) phones, there is a huge choice of software available due to the popularity of such phones (6600, nGage, etc). However, the 7710 uses Series 90, and is the only phone that uses this OS. This means that the number of software is comparatively less. On the bright side, most S60 software will run on the 7710, just not in full screen mode. You can download lots of 7710 software here (https://4ever7710.googlepages.com/).

(4) The maximum size of SD memory card you can install is 1GB. The phone does work with larger capacity cards, but in such a configuration it frequently hangs and you have to reset it.

Overall, the 7710 is a good combination of capabilities and cost. There are other phones available that have better features, but at a much higher cost.

Cost:

I purchased the 7710 at an authorized Nokia showroom for Rs. 15,500 (with bill & warranty). I paid an additional Rs. 1,250 for a 1GB memory card, and negotiated with the shopkeeper to swap the standard 128MB card that comes with the phone for a USB card reader. Overall a good deal.

In case anybody's interested, the cost of the HP iPaq 6515 is Rs. 29,990 and the iMate k-Jam (or something like it, I again forgot the exact model number) is Rs. 32,000.